2015 im Rückblick

Die WordPress.com-Statistik-Elfen haben einen Jahresbericht 2015 für dieses Blog erstellt.

Hier ist ein Auszug:

Ein New York City U-Bahnzug fasst 1.200 Menschen. Dieses Blog wurde in 2015 etwa 4.200 mal besucht. Um die gleiche Anzahl von Personen mit einem New York City U-Bahnzug zu befördern wären etwa 4 Fahrten nötig.

Klicke hier um den vollständigen Bericht zu sehen.

A summary and 12 life lessons of 2015

As the year comes to an end, some of us may find themselves spending time thinking about the things they have gone through in the past 12 months. As (almost) always, for (almost) everyone, 2015 has been a year full of life lessons, of breakdowns, of moments of confidence or fear that make you feel like you are starting all over.

I have come to consider myself an expert of those „ok f*ck this shit I am forgetting everything that has happened in the past 12 months and starting all over again“-moments. Truth is, that never happens right away, and many times, I feel like I never really change anything that bothers me about myself or my life or the people who surround me. However, every year I look back on the person I was 12 months before, I realize I have moved forward. Sometimes I take huge steps backwards, make horrible mistakes, and put myself back on the level of mental-12-year-old-Pia, I’ll admit that. Then again, sometimes even I have those enlightening moments where I do or say something smart, where I make a right decision, or where things just work out – even if I don’t contribute anything at all. Altogether, I guess these enlightening moments are what could be called life lessons – beautiful words, right?

Having spent 2/3 of this year working in and travelling through literally every possible area of Costa Rica, spent 1/12 trying to desperately make myself at home in a city that clearly did not want to welcome me with open arms (which kind of broke my little heart, since my love for this city had been endless for the past 11 years of my life) and on a continent that I had called my home for the past 19 years, but where all of a sudden everything felt so weird, and finally spent 1/4 actually BEING  at home in that same city, tying life strings between my first classes at university, furnishing an empty room that I now get to call my home in a beautiful flat shared with two even more beautiful flatmates in a beautiful part of beautiful Berlin; it is safe to say that for me, 2015 might have been the year that has brought the biggest changes to my life ever since I had set my big feet on this planet almost 20 years ago. Long story short: As I have done for almost all of 2015, I felt the need to share my summary and overview of life lessons this year has thrown at me with the people that have followed my Latinamerican adventures for a whole year; and at the same time thank you guys once again for having put up with my page-long blog posts and flocks of photos over all that time.

What is to follow is an overview over the past 12 months, spent all over Costa Rica, a little bit of Vienna, and lots of Berlin. Hoping I won’t sound too much like a #perfectsayings-page on Instagram, I mostly want to thank you folks for making me realize the importance writing has in my life by reading this blog – most likely wouldn’t be in university doing what I am doing right now if writing for you throughout the past year hadn’t brought me the joy it did! 🙂

For those of you who aren’t down for another page-long update on life, let me send you my best wishes for a great 2016 right away. Make the most of this empty page to come! 🙂 Lots of love from downtown Vienna to all over the world,

Pia

• January: quite an empty month in Costa Rica – unemployed/on vacation, with lots of time for maaany trips to all different sides of the country, making my love for this place grow with every bus ride. Life lessons of the months: unless you are a crazy backpacker willing to miss 3 buses in a row and picknicking in the pouring rain in the middle of nowhere, you might want to plan your trips more than half a day ahead. On a more important note, January taught me that there is no one I can rely on the way I can rely on my own intuition – even if it took me 4 months, January was the month that I decided to quit work at Fernando Centeno Güell, which was probably the best decision I made in my whole year in Tiquicia. 

• February: as empty as the first month of this year might have been, the second one definitely made up for it – I got inked, got a new job, and all of a sudden, I was SO busy I didn’t even know how to spell    b-o-r-e-d-o-m anymore. Which, of course, filled the month with life lessons: „Do something that scares you every day“. Whether it is spontaneously getting a tattoo or saying YES to a job you know absolutely nothing about other than the fact you’ll work 40 hours a week, in my case, I did not regret my decisions once. That tattoo might have been the most painful thing I have ever done to myself, and the day I started working at ACI, when Phileas picked me up from the office, he must have thought I’d gone mad – but eventually, those 2 scary „jumps into the fog“ could not have turned out any better. 

• March: an erupting volcano and my first sea-swallows-sun-sunset make me realize that no matter what we do, it’ll always be nature > us. Endless drives along dirt roads and breathtaking look-outs while exploring the country with my aunt & uncle from Germany help me shape my life lesson of the month, which is more of a reminder: Home is where your heart is, and I have lost my heart to Costa Rica. No matter which country issued your passport, you are free to belong to any place where you feel you are at home. 

• April: My host moms 51st birthday shows me I have found another family for good, I learn that nothing works more soothing on me than a day at the beach, and the life lesson of the month teaches me that (even if that is the contrary of what I have told you earlier), sometimes you just don’t listen to your intuition – you don’t. Because sometimes you make mistakes, and there are some mistakes that cannot be repared: they cause a shit load of trouble, and their consequences may follow you a lot longer than you’d think. So, sometimes: brains > intuition.

• May: definitely one of my craziest, if not THE craziest month of the whole year. Being robbed at gunpoint resets the amount of fear I am able to survive to a new level, touring the country as the leader of 13 teenage Canadians resets my self-confidence to a higher level, and I finally see this country with the eyes of a resident: issued my official Costa Rican visa! 🙂 The life lesson of the month is an obvious one: nothing gets you as far as brutal and clear honesty, and nothing makes you more weak and more strong at the same time than unconditional trust.

• June: the final trip with my volunteer family makes me think that this family really is forever, my body reacting to the Costa Rican change of season just like it reacts to European change of seasons makes me realize that adaptation is accomplished, and starting a countdown till my departure home teaches me the life lesson of the month: there is nothing that I love more than the bittersweet taste of departure and the excitement to be starting a new adventure soon.

• July: the last full month in Tiquicia is definitely one of my busiest… Passed and aced my DELE-exam, had my final seminar with ACI Costa Rica, said sad goodbyes to the first international volunteers, welcomed my European family to my Costa Rican home, went on my last trip with the best travel partner the year could have given me, visited my last museums, and realized for good HOW important some ticos had become to me. Life lesson of the month: live in the moment – honestly, you will not believe how time can fly when you least want it to.

• August: the last month of Costa Rica was such a crazy beautiful month I’ll just skip straight to all the life lessons this month threw at me: 1) I’ll be back. Home is where your heart is. 2) Do not let anybody scare you into something you don’t want to do. 3) Nothing makes me as happy as the ocean. 4) You have people who love you all over the world. Did I mention I’ll be back, Costa Rica?

• September: After just 6 days at home in Vienna, it was time for me to get packed again and board the next airplane. Destination: the big, blank, empty page of starting university in Berlin. Spent the month trying to get a German insurance, phone contract, bank account and, above all, a place to live for the next months/years. Took me about 47 mental breakdowns and definitely made me feel like I didn’t belong anywhere anymore, but the life lesson I learned definitely made up for those ridiculous 4 weeks: „It’s always darkest before the dawn“. Just when you hit that point where you think you can’t do it anymore, hang in there, because life is most likely just about to open the door of a palace for you. In my case, I did end up finding the world’s most beautiful palace/flat in downtown Berlin 🙂

• October: After 12 months of just hanging out in the tropics, it was finally back to academic reality for me: the first classes of university definitely kicked my ass, and after the first week, I was positive I was studying the wrong thing at the wrong university surrounded by the wrong people in the wrong city. Of course, your drama queen #1 is exaggerating here, but I definitely did question the decision I’d taken. Now that I look back on my doubts, I do still understand them (I actually wasn’t sure if I was studying the right thing until about 2 weeks ago haha), but I am glad I reminded myself of a life lesson I had learned way earlier in life: One step at a time. I am the #1 expert at doing this, sadly, but freaking out and questioning your whole life at once has never helped anybody. Give yourself the time to get used to new things, take deep breaths and just give things time to happen and develop – in other words… chill.

• November: Terrorist attacks in Paris make me question everything that happens on this planet all over again, moving on is not as easy as it seems, and I successfully push a few people miles away from me. I get my nose pierced, and spontaneously buy a bus ticket to Vienna, where I hide for a few weeks, which definitely teaches me the life lesson of the month: no matter how people judge you for it, you should do as much of what makes you happy as possible. If that is some downtime far away from everything that makes up your life, so be it. 2 weeks at home filled me with genuine happiness, strength, and the sweet reminder that there is no better person in life than Mom. 

• December: Quality time with my friends in Vienna reminds me once again that this city will always be much more of a home than I’ll admit to myself and others, at the same time, being with them makes me realize how much I have changed since I have left this city. The past 4 weeks have actually taught me more than one hard, but essential life lesson.  At some point, you must learn, even if it’s the hard way, that some people just aren’t as good for you as you might have thought over the past months. Don’t be afraid to distance yourself from the people who make you weak or, no matter if intentionally or unintentionally, keep hurting you. I have also been learning to stick up for myself, to be back to shining the way my Canadian host dad always said I did, and should. In the past few days, I have been adjusting the tiara my flatmate got me for Christmas, and reminding myself that „a princess doesn’t lose sleep over the opinion of sheep“. Nobody can lower your self-esteem unless you give them the power to.

So, that was it with the things I have learned, or am still learning, of 2015. Knowing that in the upcoming year, I will still make just as many, and probably at lot of the same mistakes, I still trust that some day, I will have learned my lessons and moved on to new mistakes, so it doesn’t get boring 😉 On that note, thank you 2015 and cheers to 2016!

Happy New Year,

Pia

Can somebody teach me how to close chapters in life as easily as closing a suitcase?

The black pairs of flats. The leather handback from Nicaragua. The red, long skirt. The travel guide. My first Spanish book, La Sombra del Viento. The bottle of Cacique. The huge black scarf. My ACI-shirt. The blue, flower-printed dress. First diary, second diary, third diary. The map of Costa Rica. A 1-Liter-bottle of Salsa Lizano, and many kilos of frijoles molidos. Seashells, collected all over the country. My Imperial- beer glass. The pet-monkey from my host brother. My purple silk sleeping bag.

What do all these weird, random things, have in common? They fit in my suitcase.

Which, on one hand, is great. At least this time, I will not have to worry about making American Airlines even richer by paying an insane overweight-fee (I hope, anyways…).

What’s there not to celebrate, then? What’s the problem? The problem is easy: I can’t take the rest with me. And Pia, what is the rest…?

The rest? Is that the story of how I went all the way from Moravia to Desamparados, on a 1,5 hour bus trip during rush hour, to get the only pair of black fats in size 42 available in this country, and the insane amount of times I had to wash them to get rid of the wet-dog-plastic-should-not-get-wet-but-oh-shit-it’s-rain-season-smell? The story of the little leather-store in our favourite street in Granada, Nicaragua, that we girls went back to about 4 times before we made up our minds and managed to decide which one of the beautiful bags each of us was going to buy, while the boys sat in different bars, drinking beer, slowly getting frustrated? The story of hiding the red, long skirt at the very back of my closet, because it brought back memories of such a sad day that I never wanted to put it on ever again – until the day my host mom found it and told me I looked like a princess in it? The travel guide, the book that I have read the most in my entire life, full of sticky notes, little smiley-faces next to my favourite places, and check-marks on maps? The memories of my beautiful 19th birthday dinner with my whole family and Phileas, during which my host aunt gave me La Sombra del Viento as a birthday gift, even though I had expressed my desire to read this book in Spanish approximately 4 months before? Cacique – the cheapest Costa Rican liquor you could possibly get, and the initiation of so many drunken adventures, deep talks, big mistakes, crazy nights? The stories of the black, cosy, winter scarf I bought in October, because it had hit me that in Costa Rica, temperatures do vary and it does get cold, and because I got homesick, for the very first time in my life, and I needed something huge and comfy to cuddle myself in to, or maybe the story behind the guy that owns the cat that makes for this scarf to look as if I had wrapped a baby-lion in it right now? The story of an office-family I remember every time I put on my ACI-office-shirt, of endless conversations with Andrea, endless hugs from Doña Marta, endless love from Jessica, endless lunches, discussions and laughs with Francisco, endless explanations from Mauricio, endless happiness every morning I rang the door bell and endless memories I made with this shirt on and with these people around me? The throwback to that day I arrived in Matapalo with the blue dress on, or to that day I crossed a deeper-than-I-thought river in Jacó in my dress, and with my whole bag, resulting in a screaming Pia, a laughing beach, and the immediate death of my 2nd Costa Rican cellphone (Rest in paradise, BLU ❤ )? The 361 diary entries I wrote at night, lying on my bed in all sorts of weird positions, and how scribbling pages and pages in the Europe-style, then in the simple purple, and finally in the beautiful golden agenda-notebooks saved me from insanity, from forgetting, from ignoring, and helped me to understand, learn and heal from so many things? The checkmarks on the 100-colones-Costa Rica school-map I got in the library next to my first workplace, that mark all the places I wanted to see, and managed to see, in the past year? The memory of my first encounter with Salsa Lizano and frijoles molidos, and the thought that immediate popped up in my mind („WHAT KIND OF HOLY SAINT SENT THIS STUFF DOWN FROM HEAVEN?!“), followed by the countless times I teared a pack open, poured the perfect amount of Salsa Lizano on what looked like a piece of dog shit, warmed it up and almost died of happiness when I dipped the first nacho (or a spoon, or my finger, too) in this perfectness? The feeling of that mix of sand and water between my toes during endless, sometimes rainy beach walks with Johanna, Phileas or Simon, staring at our feet, while looking for the most beautiful sea shells to bring back home, and while making plans for what we were to do with these sea shells the day we were actually going home…? The Imperial-beer glass and 6-pack my cousin got me for Christmas, and how it became a tradition for my whole family to get me Imperial beer for any occasion, thinking nothing could make a German happier, and/or that I had severe alcohol-problems, but at the same time, the laughter I bursted into every time I opened a new „surprise“ gift? The sadness when I think of that night when I came home in the middle of the night, to find an umbrella on my bed, which my host mom got me after weeks of telling me to get a new one, the torrent of not-so-sober-tears I bursted into, the confusion of my host brother who walked into my room to see what was going on, his hugs and desperate tries to cheer me up while I was bawling my eyes out about the fact I had to leave this family soon, and then, finally, how he rushed out of my room, then rushed back in with the pet monkey that had been hanging from his window all year and that I laughed about so many times: „so you never forget me – it even smells like my room! smell it!“. The memories of the countless trips during which I had my sleeping bag in my backpack, but never acutally used it, because it was way too much fun to see Phileas struggle for just a centimeter of blanket every night and failing miserably (here is, on that note, the official, public acknowledgment: I am a blanket-stealing sleeping monster and always will be and how much I love a person does not change one little thing about it.)

Yes, that is the rest. These are the things that will never fit in my suitcase, the things that no matter what. nor Costa Rican, nor US, nor British, not Austrian customs will be able to take away from me in the upcoming 48 hours. These things are the reason the words „Costa Rica“ will, for the rest of my life, make my heart race, my head spin, and my mouth want to scream and shout out a million stories about the most adventurous year of my life. But… these things are also the reason I have dreaded packing my suitcase until today, why I do not want to think about arriving in Vienna on Tuesday, and why I made the investment of about 4€ in a box of Kleenex for the airport tomorrow, even though that is how expensive this shit is here. 

days and days of goodbyes – how does one express love that is so strong that it makes me feel like my head will explode soon?

I had planned to make this post a smart one. One about the things I have learned during this year. One about the things I love(d) about my life here. One about how this year changed me and so many things about the way I see life. One with all my favourite moments. One where I manage to express how grateful I am – grateful towards my host family, or my tico family, or my volunteer family. How grateful I am for this country.

I don’t think I succeeded at this inital plan…

Gracias a mis ticos, y gracias a Costa Rica. Gracias por las cosas que, al llegar, me enojaron tanto, pero que, al final, me hicieron pensar más que todas las cosas bonitas que me ofreciste. Gracias por las cosas „normales“, que, te lo prometo, nunca di, y nunca daré, por entendido: tus playas, tus bosques, tu comida, tus animales, tus caminos, tu sol, tus nubes, tus flores, tu lluvia ( ❤ ), gracias por tus caras – tu gente. Por sus amistades, su paciencia, y las horas y horas que se tomaron para exliquarme algo que no entendi, y, más que todo, para ayudarme a aprender amar a este país. GRACIAS – ustedes son la gente incréible que lograron enseñarme este idioma! 🙂 Me parece honesto de decir que, en un año con ustedes, yo aprendi más que en 18 años de vida sola. Al escuchar „Latinoamerica“ de Calle 13 se me pone la piel de gallina, a ver por la ventana de un bus o de un carro cuando ando paseando, la belleza de este país me sigue captando un poco más cada vez, y „Costa Rica“ se anadió a la lista de lugares que, para mi, son mi hogar, junto con Francia, Austria, Alemania y Canadá.

I got accepted into my 1st choice university in Berlin, found a flat to share with two absolutely awesome girls, and, obviously, have a WONDERFUL group of loving people waiting for me with open arms in several parts of Europe – o sea, I know there are great things ahead, new adventures waiting for me, and, above all, many stories I still have to write… 🙂 I want to thank you all for the time you took to follow my adventure, to comment my experiences, and for the strength you sent along my way in various forms and colours. I wish I could keep writing this forever, but I know „the show must go on“, right? THANK YOU – to all of you, for everything, from the deepest bottom of my heart! I’ll see you soon.

Pueden verlo como una promesa o una amenaza – Pia volverá 🙂 Y, ojala, y si Dios quiere, „ya casi“ – como dicen por aquí. Muchisimás gracias por todo, todo, todo. No hubiero podido preguntar por un mejor año, y eso es gracias a ustedes. En mi corazón, les llevo conmigo „de to‘ la’o“. 

PURA VIDA Y HASTA PRONTO, COSTA RICA.

Siempresiempre,

tu Pia.

On a scale of 1-10, I might have hit the 114 today when it comes to „success at dreading to update the blog“. Hey, I have a good excuse for this lack of motivation: it’s my last update. 

Now, no worries – it is not my last post, I think. Mostly because I could keep writing this blog forever, I guess… But as the upcoming 8 days will mostly be filled with souvenir-shopping, goodbye-hugs, foodie-feasts and tears, I don’t think I have any huge adventures coming up anymore. So, ustedes mejor approvechen: here are the highlights of my last weeks in Costa Rica!

• actually, I lied: started, and almost finished, days of souvenir shopping. Highlights? Bought a hammock. Happiness-level? Higher than Bob Marley on his best days. Other than that? Everything from posters and platano chips to coconut oil and cocoa beans. Does that mean I am „ready“ to leave? Qué pregunta más estupida…

• Family farewell #1: beautiful „let’s get everybody together one last time“-dinner in one of my favourite cafés in San José. What can I say, other than My crew > your crew, and what I am going to do without my crazy Germans?

• …meaning the first farewells have started, weeks ago already. From my favourite Italian volunteer and colleague, our crazy Polish, and various other members of the volunteer-team. I’ve learnt to be good with farewells – but that doesn’t make them easier, not one little bit.

• MAMA IST DA! took a week off work to show my mom and sister around my beautiful new home with Johanna. It was an interesting week, filled with a few culture shocks for my mom and sister („what do you mean I can’t throw the toilet paper in the toilet?“), lots of gallo pinto, that my family loves just as much as I do, many kilometres on the road filled with millions of beautiful sights and the realization that, from the bottom of my heart, I am more in love with Costa Rica, its landscapes and its culture, than I have ever been with anybody or anything in my life before. However, a week of travelling, picture taking, driving, wandering, walking, sunbathing, skin-burning, ocean-ing and happy-being ended quite abruptly with two stolen, full backpacks. The 3rd police station this year is, once again, one of the parts of my life here

  • that I just want to ignore and forget, which is why I am just not even going to start mentionning the hussle of the following weeks (but SHOUTOUT to the German bureaucracy that I usually hate more than anything, for getting 2 new passports in 24 HOURS!) end of the story? an eventful vacation with consequences, the loss of about 50% of the clothes I had brought to Costa Rica, and mom & sister have made it home safely (gracias a Dios, huh ❤ )

  • after these adventures, slowly getting back on my last days of routine, decorated by the odd torrent of tears or minutes of laughter that characterize my bipolar personnality in intense periods: got my first university acceptance email (how beautiful is that feeling?!?! 😀 ), apartment searching (shoot me now is all I have to say on that note), host-mother-coffee-drinking, last plans, host-brother-bonding-talks, best-friend-cake-eatings…

  • checked something off of my life-bucket-list: my first pilgrimage! 🙂 on august 2nd, the biggest catholic national holiday, 1,5 million ticos start a pilgrimage from various places in Costa Rica to Cartago, to the country’s biggest cathedral. some walk all the way from Guanacaste or Limón, several 100 kilometres! get real, a few friends and I managed to walk about 13km in the blistering heat of a saturday afternoon, resulting in pure satisfaction as we got to the cathedral, and the worst sunburn I got in Costa Rica so far – an adventure…

  • „goodbye, paradise“: my last trip took me and Johanna back to Puerto Viejo, on the Carribean coast, the place I have loved most from the very first time I went there. Arriving there seriously felt like „coming home“: steps get slower, mind gets emptier, talks and thoughts get deeper. 3 days of farewell-letter-writing, hammock-ocean-watching, insane amounts of eating and talking, long beach walks in the rain and one, ongoing and deeply disturbing thought: „how did life work before I had the ocean by my side?“

  • „i’m out“: cutting down my work charges, doing things for the „last time“, and taking mornings or afternoons off to get other things done, while enjoying my last lunches or coffee conversations with the best compañeros I could have asked for. how much am I going to miss my office-family…?

  • „what the fuck am I going to do when you are gone?“ – last avocado-sandwich-picknicks in my favourite park, last cups of coffee and first and last souvenir-and-food-organic-market-saturday-morning-shopping with phileas, who is flying home almost a week before me. and the fact that i will not have my blonde and stupid half with me for the last days does not make saying goodbye any better…

  • „goodbye to the niña who came and added herself to the family like an additional, beautiful appendix“ – beautiful goodbye words from my favourite host uncle. as two of my cousins are leaving Costa Rica this week as well, to start university in Cuba and France, we had a goodbye family dinner last night. obviously, i almost bawled my eyes out. it wasn’t always easy, but i have learned to love my giant host family like my own, and even though I struggled through a few of them, I am going to miss huge family reunions, people having 17 conversations at once, chaos, drinks, great food and prayers. i love my tico family.

  …and there goes my last update. to make this a little happier, i’ll attach about 500 photos of the last weeks, and keep telling myself i’ll be back before i leave. just like i already know i will be back in costa rica – at the latest in december 2017, as i told my brother i’d be back for his high school grad. sounds good, doesn’t it? 🙂

  lots and lots and lots of cloudy sadness-sunshine from paradise!

  pia

• 

  what would I have been without this girl? the most beautiful sunset in costa rica and the most beautiful girl in my life at the moment in one picture! 🙂

  

  my crew > your crew – the best family a volunteer can have!

  

  adventures of the past weeks – family roadtriping

  

  we made it!! after a not-so-successful encounter with the country’s most famous volcano in january, johanna and I EVENTUALLY managed to meet the giant 🙂

  

  

  Lago del Arenal, and I will never get enough of driving by sights like these

  

  Parque Nacional Rincon de la Vieja

  

  

  boiling, smelly and hilarious mud holes, heated by volcanic activity, may or may not be the funniest thing I have ever seen

  

  

  If I could capture smell in a picture nobody would be looking at this, that’s for sure

  

  

  How does nature do such things?! I LOVE COSTA RICA ❤

  

  

  Playa Hermosa, Guanacaste – my new, most beautiful Costa Rican atardecer 🙂

  

  

  

  

  Stupid 1 & Stupid 2 finally reunited – sisterly love

  

  Meet my new favourite beach, hidden spot, and secret big love

  

  

  …and you are asking me to leave this…?

  

  Playa Conchal, a huge beach with sand made of broken seashells – hell for your feet and heaven for your eyes

  

  

  Playa Cocles, Limón, Carribean

  

  When did I turn into a person able to get this close to such animals?

  

  Puerto Viejo de Talamanca

  

  Puerto Viejo de Talamanca

  

  

  

  

  And you are asking me to leave this 2.0

  

  

  Mission „Message in a rum bottle“

  

  

I don’t have time right now but at least it’s full of pictures – sorry & you’re welcome

My dears,

Let me apologize from the very first word: perdón, to do it in my, by now, 4th language (I’ll tell you in a second why I have now hit that point where I manage to proudly admit that, FUCK YES, I speak Spanish).

But first, I am busy apologizing to you. For not letting you know about my insane happiness for at least 5 (!!!) weeks? Yup, that too. But more than that, for not even doing a huge update today – I do not have time.

Yeah, that time thing has hit me. Because I had my final seminar last week, the „it’s almost over and prepare yourself for your return“-weekend? That too. Because I realized that next week, on the 21st, I will be celebrating my last Costa Rica anniversary, hit the 11-month-mark, because I will never make it to the 12-month-anniversary? That too. Because I am flying home on Monday, the 17th of August, o sea – in 4 weeks? Most likely.

So no, I don’t have time. And even though I know I am going to hate myself for this in a few years, when I stumble across my blog and will want to read how I felt in my last weeks of the most adventurous year I have ever had, and there will just be – a list and pictures?!, and even though my writer heart and writer soul hurt badly from writing this, I’ll have to say it: I do not have time to write. And I am not going to make time for it. 

What follows though, is a good 40 pictures of my last weeks here, and a list (no words no description just a list I am sorry) of my last highlights here. I am sorry. 

• took a tourist stroll through San José, took my camera with me for the first time, went to a beautiful organic farmer’s market, bought my first souvenirs – a slow way of starting to say goodbye, I guess…

• days in bed due to the craziest cold I had in years, and more days with a swollen foot due to my lack of talent and ongoing desire to have my foot bitten by ants – did I mention my foot turns red/blue/purple and huge when it just sees an ant?

• huge accomplishment to check off my bucket list: Mirja, Ilaria & I made it to Teatro Nacional for a beautiful concert! 🙂

• trip to Uvita with Phileas (I am starting to realize this blog sounds like the guy’s my only friend in this country – which, for the record, he is not, but he IS by far my #1 favourite person to travel with, ever): rainy, weird, short and grey weekend – but we went to a waterfall and that makes up for everything else because waterfalls will forever be my #1 favourite thing in the world! ❤

• „crew love is true love“ – the past weeks, more than ever, have made me realize I cannot imagine a life without my volunteer family anymore. dinner dates with my 3 favourites at home, stupid monopoly-fights (I hate this game), a ridiculously lazy pizza-movie saturday in bed, coffee dates with the whole crew, hostel nights and the ongoing return to that club that, deep down, I hate (but you do it for the crew, right? yes). seriously, life without them would be a shitshow I don’t want to begin to imagine.

• I HAVE MY FAMILY BACK!!!!!!!! picked up mother and sister from the airport. I have never been happier to see anybody in my life and cannot wait to be „on the road“ with them next week 🙂 🙂 🙂

• „it’s the final…. seminar“ – hard to believe, really. had a great weekend full of amazing people. funny stories, new memories, and at the same time the slow, but hard preparation for the return „home“ . and, even though i get randomly teary when I sit on the bus in the evening and the thought of the airport scares me – I think I am ready for the next adventure 🙂

• it had been a while since Phileas and I went to a museum – so we changed that this week and went to a photo exhibition in the Galeria Nacional, which is definitely one of, if not my favourite museum in San José 🙂 what will I be without our coffee dates though? does life even go on after…?

• yesterday, first time in over a year I used my brain – and I think it was worth it! Johanna & I had signed up for the DELE Spanish exam to prove that we are not complete noobs at Spanish anymore. and even though we wil only get our results in 6-8 weeks, I have a very, very good feeling about this 🙂

• aaand, because apparently, I felt like having a smart, intellectual day yesterday. Phileas and I went to the theatre in the evening. 1) I love going to the theatre. 2) I missed it. 3) It was great. Nothing more to add 🙂

There you go – the summary of the adventures of the past weeks! I know it’s not comparable to what I usually do to you, but believe me, I did what I could, concerning I should have showered about an hour ago and I will be late again for my next adventure. Have I ever been on time, in my life, anywhere, ever…? Doubt it.

Que tengan un buen día! 🙂

Pia

after successfully turning off my brain for a year, here we go again – DELE

Feria Verde, aka. the sweetest Farmer’s Market I have even been to

San José is an artsy city

Casa Amarilla – also, excuse the quality of the pictures, due to the fact I still have a hard time using my camera downtown

Parque España

Edifico Metalico

Parque España

Parque Morazan

Taxis & buses – the most classical sight in San José

Plaza de la Cultura

Teatro Nacional / the most downtown it gets in San José

Catedral Metropolitana

…change of sights? Parque Nacional Marino Balllena, Uvita

I love grey skies 🙂

Just thinking about life, eh?

Even though the sky looks like the zombie apocalypse was approaching, I loved the place! I have, indeed, a small obsession with stormy seas, rain and greyish skies

Catarata de Uvita

and change of sights 2.0 – meet the almost sober faces of one of my favourite colleagues, Jessica, and me

„intercambios“ – the coolest people one will ever meet

„the crew“ +/- a few (rhymes) – 30 Germans turned into Costa Ricans

Heads bumps, time flies and Pia keeps wandering & wondering

In all honesty, starting a new blog post is always the only bad part about writing at all. I wish I could just start this with a plain START HERE every time I publish something new, because I doubt the lack of creativity with doing this could be any bigger than the one where I start every post with a „my dears…“. What do you think?

START HERE. 

Tomorrow is June 17th! No big day at all, actually, but you know what this date means for me? In 2 months, on that day, I’ll be going home. 10/12. 5/6. „We’re almost there“. I remember, a year ago, at that time, I had just finished all my exams, and started working on the Visa process for Costa Rica. And although that shit seemed so insanely difficult, resulting in me starting to question whether I’d ever be going to Costa Rica at all, I also remember starting an official „departure-countdown“.

And now I have to admit I liked that countdown, back then, a lot more than I like the one now.

So much left to see, to explore, to conquer, to comment, to question, even to eat or to buy! And even though it seems like years ago that I took that „goodbye-selfie“ with my mom and sister at the airport in Vienna at 4 in the morning, at the same time, it seems like just yesterday, or even just hours ago, that I was served my first gallo pinto for breakfast, that I started my first project, had my midterm-seminar, started my second project… How was that months ago?!

At the same time, I have to admit the pleasant anticipation of going „home“ in 9 weeks is slowly picking up, even growing again. Not because I am excited to leave San José and its stunning surroundings (believe me, the plain thought of hugging my colleagues at ACI Costa Rica goodbye or getting on the bus after my last cup of coffee downtown with Phileas, or unpacking my backback after my last weekend trip with the crew makes me feel as if Mike Tyson had just left an entire fist print on my stomach). No, more because I am starting to feel the adored, the sweet taste of excitment in my mouth, excitment about the upcoming adventures: my applications have officially made their way to 5 different universities in Germany, I have started to look into accomodation for October and the months after, and I am starting to make plans for the empty weeks after my return (joking, they won’t be empty at all: health insurance, packing for university, or trying to fit my beloved bike in the car to bring it to Germany will fill them up for me, no worries Pia).

Yes, I am coming home! And although Costa Rica will forever be a place that I will love to return to because I will never get enough of this country’s diversity, I am going to keep moving on. Wandering and wondering, on to the next adventure and chapter of this versatile story! 🙂

So now, it’s about making the countdown count, for good – I am not quite done here yet, and here is how I have kept myself busy lately…

• „Abschlussfahrt“ how you’d say in German, how we called it, still call it. Our final trip, all together. Due to the full schedules of all us, my crew/family and I had to schedule our last weekend together over 2 months before the first departure. 2 weeks ago, my 8 closest friends and I rented a gorgeous house in a suburb of San José, in the mountains, in the middle of nowhere and spent our last entire weekend there together. If I were to sum up our 2 days there in numbers, I am guessing an approximate 30kg of food, 27 group pictures (see below for one of the best examples), at least 4L of Cacique combined with various other beverages in every possible form and color, and about 9 hours of sleep. To sum up it in words? „No se puede“, except maybe…I love my volunteer family so much.

• Trip to Santa Elena with my best chica, Johanna, on the weekend: the summary would be 2 days full of talking, insane food attacks, and wandering in the rain forest. Sadly, the weekend also included (and mostly resulted) in the use of about 40 Kleenex and various pills to fight our headaches/red noses/swollen tonsils: we brought an insane cold back, and I have been carrying it with me for the past days. It seems to want to become my new best friend, and has a hard time accepting the end of our lovestory, making my head want to explode to punish me from wanting to break up. Besides that though, it kind of amuses me to see that my body reacts to the change of Costa Rican seasons (dry – rainy just happened here) just like it would to the change of seasons in Europe. Adaption – check! 😀

Other than these two trips, the past weeks included my inscription to the DELE-exam to get some sort of proof that I am not an absolute noob at Spanish anymore, two trips to the movies (resulting in the frustrating insight that both in the case of a huge earthquake and the less likely case of a dinosaur attack, I’d be completely screwed 😦 ), the visit of a (to me) new club downtown San José, a trip to a tattoo fair (2 of my best friends have joined me in the tattoo-in-Costa-Rica-team! 🙂 ), an insane amount of work at…work, and many Skype dates with friends and family in my different homes, Canada and Austria – the long talks with my best friend boost the excitment of coming home more than anything else! 🙂

My dears, that was it from me for today. As I want to keep updating my blog more than ever and have about 7 different ideas for new blog post, the time-gods aren’t very gracious with me… I’ll try my best, I promise!

A wonderful rest of the weeks and lots of sunshine from Costa Rica!

END HERE. 

I am sorry I keep bothering you with the same green pictures – but I will NEVER get enough of the rain forest!

How can there be such a huge amount of different shades of…GREEN?

„enchanted“ – in every possible way

Reserva Bosque Nuboso Santa Elena – cloud forest 🙂

We found a small house for our goodbye trip 🙂

Family breakfast is the best breakfast

The view from our house was just a little impressive

When the Champions League Finale coincides with the farewell trip, everybody is happy – almost

Family – crew love, true love!

Canada goes tico, makes Pia happy and I met my first gun – adventures of the past weeks

Estimados, estimadas, queridos, queridas!

Espero se encuentren muy bien.

Yo tengo noticias para ustedes (…)

And this would be how I start about 76% of the emails I send to various people in Costa Rica all day long, at work. How does one fall in love with doing things like these? I have no clue, but I definitely did.

First off, let me apologize: I am not completely sure if it’s actually been weeks since I updated you, or if I just think that because I’ve probably never had more stuff going on in my life and in my head than in the past weeks. Buuut, just in case it has actually been what feels like half a year since my last post, let me be like my beloved Canadians (that influence this post quite strongly): I’m soooooooorry!!! 🙂

Another thing I am not entirely sure about is if you guys are very enthusiastic about the 7-page blog post I feel like writing… Probably not, eh? Fine then, what follows entonces is a list-form-post ( ❤ )  on the 1,875,493 things that have turned my calm and beautiful pura vida lifestyle here upside down and swung me around like cookie batter in a mixer in the past weeks.

• Checked off one of the priorities I had on my CR-bucket list, Parque Nacional Tortuguero. Aaand fell in love. The village of Tortuguero is only reachable by boat or plane, which means absolutely no cars around! Bordered by the canal system unique to this part of the country on one side and the Atlantic ocean on the other side of the village, Tortuguero is like a small island of tranquillity, where you just take off your watches  and put your cell phone away the very minute you get there . Especially when you travel with people like I am lucky enough to do, Inka, Moritz, Johanna & Phili. I did take out my cell phone at some point, only to set an alarm for 5am the next morning: our canoe-tour through the canal system of the national park was definitely worth getting up at such a time of the day. All in all, I had a wonderful weekend filled with gorgeous landscapes, crazy animals, wonderful food and great conversations.

• After these 3 great days, I was ready to tackle the crazy Semana Internacional at the office: during one week, the office was full of all the volunteers hosted at the time, preparing ACI Costa Rica’s biggest event, the Dia Internacional. On this day, about 15 countries set up a stand at the office, with typical food, various activities and  information about the country. It was a blast! It’s always nice to have the “whole family” united, reunited. It was a crazy week though – trying to find a spot somewhere between doing your regular office-work in a place that is slowly transforming itself into a mix of the atelier of 40 talented painters and a normally operating and super busy office, and at the same time spending as much time with my volunteer family as possible. My contribution to the Dia Internacional eventually resulted in baking the world easiest cake with Phileas on Friday night, before the event. It turned out great though (the cake AND the event) and I had an insane amount of fun during those days!

• I definitely did not have that event scheduled on my tico bucket list, but according to Costa Rican friends, it “was to happen at some point”: robbed at gunpoint. I am easily scared and almost die when I have to sleep at home alone for one single night, but the level of fear one should be able to feel for a period of a few seconds was definitely reset to a whole new level in that night. Have I ever mentioned that when Phileas and I are together, there is no such thing as a compromise between “horrible fail” and “everything is perfect”? Well, there isn’t, but this night definitely flew straight up to the new #1 of our horrible-fail-moments. Also, I do not want to see a gun ever again in my life and will from now on definitely be fighting their easy accessibility.

What else has been making life a little more busy lately? Oh, yesss: rain season is back and IT STILL SUCKS! I promised myself to prepare myself this time though, and I did: bought rubber boots and an umbrella ahead of time, and they have already become my new best friends for life. In addition to that, the strong rain makes for the occasional, hour-long power outage (always a blast…) … Oh, also, the volcan Turrialba doesn’t seem to consider “calming itself down” as an option, and keeps happily sending huge clouds of grey ashes over San José. It’s basically just a really thin cover of black dust flying around in the air, that one can’t even see – but I couldn’t see it anyways, because this black dust is a reason for suicide for contact lens-victims like I am: IT HURTS.

• And finally, here is the #1 event that has been keeping me busy in the past weeks: the reunion with some of my favourite people in the world – Canadians. ACI Costa Rica received a group on 10 high school students & 3 of their teachers from Alberta, Canada, for 10 days, and guess who was lucky enough to be their group leader and person in charge during their time here? 😀 Defnitely one of the coolest experiences I have had in Costa Rica, if not in my entire life, so far! For 10 days, we happily toured in our minibus between the tiny community of Quebradas de Perez Zeledon ( ❤ ), where we lived in host families, the Biological Center of Fudebiol, where we did volunteer work like planting trees (I think…? Man, Pia and biology…) and San Isidro del General, the bigger town close to Quebradas, where we went for… Internet connection, basically. We also went to Playa Punta Leona, a beautiful beach close to Jacó, for the last weekend, and then I eventually had to drop off my beloved group at 4am on Tuesday this week 😥 . It’s crazy how easily attached I get to people after spending just 10 days with them. Although it definitely wasn’t always easy and at times, I though I’d collapse from responsibility and fear of doing something wrong (also how does one try to look like everything was under control when one of the girls gets bitten by a snake and has to be brought to the hospital although I would have preferred to run far away just thinking about the fact that there MIGHT BE SNAKES AROUND?!?!) – I definitely had a great great great time, and spending time with such amazing young people from this beautiful country I consider a home of mine definitely started a huge wave of homesickness that has hit me, and hit me hard, over the past days. I miss you, Canada! 😦 ❤

I think that was it from me for today. Obviously, in the past weeks (hasn’t it been a month though?!) many many other things have happened, and have made me think a lot, made me re-consider various parts of my life… But I promised I wouldn’t turn this into a 7-page post, so as of now, I’ll just keep my thoughts to myself and try to figure them out before I can share them! 🙂 As always, consider these the highlights of the previous weeks, and remember that there is always way more to my life here than what I can sum up in about an hour of writing…

Have a fantastic start to the week! 🙂

Saluditos de Costa Rica,

Pia

IT HAPPENED – a day after I celebrated my 9-month CR anniversary (3/4…), I became „half-tica“, as my colleagues say… I AM A RESIDENT UNTIL MAY 2016!!!

Dia Internacional – never too far from the beer bottles eh?

Tortuguero ❤

Made a little friend during the tour 🙂

Village of Tortuguero

View from hostel dock – how does one not fall in love with this?!

Quebradas de Perez Zeledon / one of the sweetest little communities I’ve seen in Costa Rica so far

Centro Biologico Fudebiol

Playa Blanca, Punta Leona, Puntarenas

Little friends on the way back to San José 🙂

Photo creds to the girl with the coolest camera alive (/my best friend / Johanna)

Where’s the sunrise? And where is last night’s sleep?

On sushi, success & waterfalls – it’s a routine

After having opened my WordPress-page about 58 times today, managed to procrastinate the writing-part for 7 hours, by going to the gym (!), eating (…) and cleaning my computer (came across pictures from 2007, didn’t even know I had a camera back then…), I finally got to it: here is the update on my beautiful life in the past weeks.

First off, let me clarify something: if I procrastinated starting to write, that is not because writing isn’t my #1 hobby anymore (get real, it is and ALWAYS will be), nor because I don’t want you guys to know that I am all well and full of bliss. It’s just… Is there even a reason or am I just making myself sound like an idiot again?! You know, I can always come up with something to write about, whether that is the casual funny story about that guy who spoke German at the supermarket (yup yup, it did lead to a slightly embarassing situation) in my day-to-day life, or the story of being attacked by waves in a beautiful national park last weekend. Yeah, there is always something I can tell you guys. But – how do I explain this AND WHY DOES MY H-KEY STILL NOT WORK?! – my life here is a very, very normal day-to-day life by now. Saying „my life here is like my life in Vienna“ would be a lie, obviously, because San José & Vienna are almost impossible to compare. But by now, what I am doing here is much more of a „Pia now lives in Costa Rica and leads a life that, in this respective context, is absolutely and a 400% casual & normal“  than a „Pia is on an adventure and staying in Costa Rica for a year wow every moment must be an adventure and so weird“ – kind of story. Of course, to you guys, my life must still be the craziest of stories – but for me, by now, it’s something normal to go to the beach on weekends, to small talk in Spanish, just like I would small talk in German/French/English, or to have a gecko run across my desk at work. And I am not saying that I am not INSANELY grateful for this kind of life that I am blessed enough to lead at the moment, I always keep in mind that this shouldn’t be taken for granted. Believe me, it’s not taken for granted. But it’s…normal.

Anyways – since I owe you guys an update either way, here it comes. But do me a favour and keep in mind that this is the shortened version of my life here. Of course, I’d rather tell you guys the stories of going to the beach and swimming under waterfalls than the stories of „I go to my local supermarket so often that I got myself a ‚tarjeta AutoMercado cliente frecuente‘ a couple weeks ago – but remember that these are both parts of my very normal, very casual life, here in the middle of Latin America. What is to follow (and what came in the last posts, and will follow in the next posts) are always just the „highlights“ of my Costa Rican routine.

• day trip to Playa Jacó with Phileas on a Sunday a few weeks back. Funny story: we originally went there to meet up with a group that was celebrating the 20th birtday of a friend of ours. Phileas having decided we’d surprise the others, we didn’t call them until we got there, at about 3pm – meanwhile, our group of friends had bought their tickets for the way back – on the bus at 4pm. Instead of celebrating a 20th birthday, the two of us almost got killed by waves (ok ok I was the only one for some reason Phileas got used to this shitshow by now), drank beer on the beach and watched the sea swallow this huge red fireball called sun. I’ve had worse sundays.

• Oh and just in case you are wondering: my work is still the #1 reason I get out of bed in the morning. There’s nothing better than the every day good morning hug from my coordinator/friend/mother Andrea and the laughs at lunch with the best companeros one could ask for. In addition to that, loving my job seems to make me do it well, which leads to even more happiness and the occasional success – whether that is the odd praise of our general director or the fact that I get to be the leader of a school group from Canada for 10 days in May: it all makes me happier and happier every day. I look forward to Staff meetings (don’t even ask me why, they are hour-long…)  and the events of the upcoming weeks (our Dia Internacional for example, ACI Costa Rica’s biggest event! 😀 ), and even to just going back to work on Monday. 🙂

• What else is a part of my daily pura vida…? A lot (lot) of fiesta, on weekends or work days, no importa. I/we also went to an open air cinema this week on the University campus, and to a French movie festival a couple weeks ago. My 4 favourite girls and I had a suhsi fiest one weekend too… (yes I still have a small obsession with Sushi in case you were wondering). Mirja, one of my best friends, and I, also signed up for the gym again for the next 3 months – since we work together, we’ve decided to go 3x/week, or more, until my cheeks are back TO WHAT THEY SHOULD LOOK LIKE: a normal person’s cheeks, not the ones of a freaking hamster. See, other than looking like an elephant, my life here in Costa Rica is very „normal“ – ok, maybe it’s a little more laid-back, but it is more than „normal“ in the context of pura vida. 

• Finally, to leave you guys with the sweet feeling of sand between your toes and sweat running down your back, which now makes up my weekends, I’ll mention that Phileas and I went back to Montezuma, on the Nicoya Peninsula, where I had been a couple weeks before with my girls.  As (almost) always when the two of us are „on the road“ our trip included crazy hiking (through the Parque Nacional Cabo Blanco, Costa Rica’s 1st national park, which, despite its age, looks like it had just been discovered yesterday – in other words, it’s a little paradise!), pasta cooking, beer & wine, waterfalls, avocado-sandwich-making, plus, the odd time, rock climbing, ferry-travelling, and an INSANE amount of fail-moments and laughing tears. I very strongly doubt I could have found a better travel – partner in crime and best friend than this guy, despite the odd dumb comment and an adorable lack of orientation or organisation. I don’t think I want to travel with anyone else on this planet anymore!

So, linda gente, estimados y estimadas – that was it from me for today, with the latest „highlights“ of my casual Pura Vida life in Costa Rica. Plans for the next weeks include preparing the Germany and the France-stand for the Dia Internacional, setting up the office, travelling to Tortuguero over the May long weekend, getting my final visa (I AM GETTING AN ACTUAL CARD THAT STATES I AM A RESIDENT OF COSTA RICA I CAN’T BELIEVE IT!!!!!! 😀 ), and travelling to different places in this country I love, as the leader of a school group from Canada. If any of you need a little additional happiness, contact me – I’ve got enough for an entire army. 🙂

Have a great start to the week!

Pia

Parque Nacional Cabo Blanco OR „a little piece of paradise“

50 Shades of Blue

I am home – for good

Queridas y queridos, qué tal? Here’s the update: i am home.

Now don’t get your hopes (or fears…) up, I did not board a plane and fly back to Europa. Since my „home-home“ was too far away, I’ve created a new one, added a new one to my list – Costa Rica is my home. 

I’m at that point, that critical point, where staying in Costa Rica has become a serious option for me, but more on that in a bit. First off, I’ll have to give you a (very very quick) update on which adventures I’ve tackled in the past weeks – that is to follow in a list-form (oh lucky you!):

• girls trip to Montezuma and Santa Teresa with 5 friends last weekend, to kick off the Semana Santa (=holy week = Easter holidays). Had a nice and relaxing weekend, full of doing basically… nothing, in one of Costa Rica’s little paradises – photos to follow!

• A BIT OF EUROPE IN COSTA RICA – brought here by the arrival of my aunt, uncle and little cousins in San José last week, and by the tremendous amount of German candy, shower gel and face wash they brought along. It is so nice to have a little family here 🙂

• a few days of travels with my family through Costa Rica: Skywalk in the cloud forest near Monteverde, monkey watching in Palo Verde National Park, and a crazy trip home from Playa Carillo, where I left them for a couple days and returned to San José, to celebrate my host mom’s 51st birthday yesterday 🙂

The weird feeling of seeing Costa Rica with the tourist-eyes of my family, but at the same time, communicating with locals in a basically fluent Spanish, paying the local entrance fee to national parks, explaining the tico ways or justifying the way things work here… I’ve realized over the past days that I am much more „at home“ here than what I had thought, just a few weeks, even my last blog post, ago!

Guys, I am home! (also I think I just managed to get a piece of galleta stuck under the H-button on my laptop and I ave to press it so ard when I want to get an H out of there now it sucks). Seriously though, it happened all of a sudden, and I swear I didn’t expect it this time – I don’t want to leave. Work definitely plays a major role in that (I counted down the days during my whole week off until I can go to work again – TOMORROW IS EVENTUALLY THE DAY!). I love my companeros so much, and the office makes me so happy, it’s like coming home every morning at 9 am when I walk through the black gate. I’ve finally managed to make some tico friends, I have a room in which I feel at home, and I get along with the people I live with (=my host family). I have my routine, and I’ve gotten used to the differences between life in Costa Rica & Austria – I’ve accepted what bothered me and value the big advantages Costa Rica offers. I want to keep travelling and going to the beach on the weekends and discover new parts of the country, which never ceases to amaze me. When I was driving over dirt roads and through the mountains with my family last week, I couldn’t help but stare out of the window and fall more and more in love with this country with every kilometre.

All that is running through my head right now is way to hard to sum up in a blog post. All at once, I am insanely happy, overwhelmed, lost… „I can’t even…“ would sum up my situation very well, ahaha.

I’ll upload a few pictures while trying to get back on track – until my next post, hopefully… Sending some of my tremendous happiness and sunshine your way, pura vida! ❤

Pia

last week’s adventures

Montezuma – „te vas por el paraíso“, my colleague said when i went – damn right

Cataratas de Montezuma

Santa Teresa – not my new favourite place but man do I love sunsets

The Bakery – best thing about Santa Teresa

Ferry on the way back – Golf of Nicoya

View from the crazy road to Monteverde

Hanging bridges – a pleasure for scaredy cats like me

How does one not fall deeply, deeply, deeply in love with this country?

I am still not fond of kids but I guess I can handly these 2 – cousins ❤

It’s summer in Costa Rica!!

Parque Nacional Palo Verde – aka. Costa Rica’s driest place

On mere happiness & nature’s strength

My lovies,

it’s  time for some new stories from paradise, verdad? And I’ve actually got a few of them, so you guys are in for a list-post again!! Life is so great, isn’t it? 🙂

• let’s start with that happiness of mine (that’ll make mom glad 😉 ): that happiness is everywhere!! Above all, it’s at work. You guys cannot imagine what a wonderful feeling it is to be excited for work the next day on a Sunday night or to have a smile on your face on your way to work in the morning. Just thinking about walking into the little building in San Pedro makes me happy: the laughs with my coordinator, Andrea, the smiles of the rest of the staff and the hug from our „office mom“, Dona Marta… I am so excited tomorrow is Monday!! 🙂 The decision to change my project and starting to work at ACI might be under the Top-5-best-decisions of my life!

• but happiness is around every corner in my life here: it’s in (almost) fluent Spanish, it’s in my 4 guuuuuurls, Kathi, Johanna, Mirja and Inka, always down for a cup of coffee or a serious („healthy“) cooking action, it’s in weekend trips with Phileas, or in the stories from my host mom’s life that she tells me at times, it’s in success at work, and in the fact that there is always, always, a little something to look forward to 🙂

• speaking of looking forward to: yes, Costa Rica and I have a very happy, and very strong relationship, and right now, I wouldn’t cheat on it with any other country. However, somewhere deep down, I know I am looking forward to boarding that plane on August, 17th. It’s not a Canada-kind-of relationship, where I have found a „home away from home“, that I never wanted to leave again, and where I could go back any second. No, it’s not: I have found a temporary home, and I love it! I do know I have got my „time“ here, I am glad I still have 5 months to enjoy this easy life I get to lead here, and would never come home a minute earlier! But at the same time, I know that in 155 days, I will be glad to fly back home, and that my friends and family will not have to put up with the emotional wreck I was when I came back from Canada – it puts a smile on my face to think that tomorrow in 22 weeks, I’ll be at the beginning of a long journey – home 🙂

• however, of course I have a bunch of plans and things I want to achieve in the upcoming 5 months… become fluent in Spanish (I am on the right path, really!!) , finish exploring this magical country, learn how to cook costa rican dishes, aaaaand a whole lot more: yes, I do still have my costa rican bucket list, and I will not fly home before I haven’t checked off every little box 😉 also, I am looking forward to 2 family visits, and I could not be happier about that 🙂

• my costa-rican-to-see-list is coming along though: I am a lot more relaxed now that I know that „worst case“, I will get it all done with my family 🙂

• checked off another box a couple weeks ago with a visit to the volcano Turrialba and the nacional monument Guyabo (photos to follow, of course!). Some of you might have heard the name of Turrialba in the news over the past days: it is actually crazy active right now! Located about 1,5 hours out San José, it is currently bathing the whole Valle Central in a thin layer of grey ashes and a funny black powder, and managed to shut down the airport for a whole day last week! It makes for nice pictures of an ash-erupting volcano (it’s honestly impressive when you think that all of this is nature!), but is an absolute horror for contact-lenses-victims like me: I was constantly crying every time I walked out the house for 3 days last week, you can imagine it was a beautiful time…

• que más? I finally had another well-deserved and much needed beach weekend with Phileas & family last weekend. We went to Manuel Antonio, the closest nice beach from San José, and did exactly what I needed: basically nothing. Ok that’s a lie actually, like always when I leave the house with Phileas, our trip was full of little adventures: we had to walk the last 6km to Manuel Antonio in the dark, because of an accident that filled the road and made it impossible for our bus to pass, I also fought a raccoon (LEGIT!) that was going after our bread at the national park, aaaand we had to flee from an army of iguanas ready to fight us after Phileas had tried to scare one of them off: mistake. It was a great weekend though, like every beach weekend. It’s crazy how soothing the beach acts on me: the heat and the blue skies and the waves literally make me forget every little worry I have ever had, from the cold I had brought to Manuel Antonio to work-stress and other problems. It really is the nicest feeling in the world and the best remedy I can imagine – nature is so strong here 🙂

  • finally, I had a good weekend here in San José too: it was Transitarte, an art festival in San José’s parks, over the weekend, and at the same time, the Festival Internacional de Diseno! A weekend full of concerts, park chilling, hipster-markets, and that in my favourite places in San José: the Antigua Aduana and San José’s beautiful parks 🙂

  That was it for today from happyhappyPia. I am living a happyhappy love story with my life right now, and with Costa Rica, and would not want to be anywhere else – way too many plans, ideas, things to do and to see and to taste. Time flies fast enough as it is, and I definitely still have enough to do to keep me busy for a good 5 months 🙂

  Happyhappy hugs and kisses and some sunshine from San José,

  Pia

  

  Crazy Turrialba – before his erruption

  

  

  Parque Nacional Turrialba – closed due to volcanic activity

  

  

  I don’t know how well wel you can see it, but around the Volcán Turrialba, everything is charred!

  

  …except for these pretty little flowers 🙂

  

  Monumento Nacional Guyabo, Costa Rica’s oldest pre-columbian archeological excavation!

  

  

  

  View from Parque Nacional Manuel Antonio

  

  It’s not hard to be as happy as I am when you live in a place like this 🙂

  

  

  Made a little friend 🙂

  

  …and a little enemy – fought that monster, literally!

  

  

  

  Shout out to those of you who find our 3 little, extremely confiding monkey friends in the picture 🙂

  

  My first „sea swallows sun“-sunset! 😀

  

  

  

  Antigua Aduana, aka. one of my favourite places in San José

  

  

  

  

  

  Transitarte 2015 – Parque Nacional

  

  Parque Espana

  🙂